New Bees for a couple of Newbies

As I posted yesterday, our bees came and the level of excitement went up like a million percent! At times, the bees were quiet; at other times, they were stirring up quite a brouhaha. At one point, I even took a brush and smeared the wire with honey I had sitting in the kitchen cabinet to calm them down. It seemed to work, because they all zapped over to the wire walls and sucked that liquid sweetness up their little straws (i.e. their chewing-lapping mouthpart also known as a proboscis).

I went to bed rather late last night and heard the alarm go off this morning at 5 and I did not want to get up! “‘F’ this, man . . . Forget this, yo!” is the only thing I thought when the alarm buzzed its stirring, but annoying ringing. But I had to get up, if not for work, then for the bees.

I quickly gathered everything and headed to the car and traveled the 40 minutes to my friend’s house way out in the county. I arrived on the scene only to find my friend half-asleep and in his sweats. We instantly got down to business, after the formalities of the morning were exchanged.

We turned on the smoker and thanks to the leaves and the multiplicity of twigs from all the surrounding trees, we able to create some awesomely thick smoke. We prepared the syrup bags, since we were going to pick up our feeders later that night. We then suited up and proceeded to perform the daunting task that lay before us: placing the bees in their respective hives.

Now don’t believe what they say or what you see on YouTube: Opening the box of bees is a real challenge! (Ah, but what’s better than a good ol’ morning challenge to start the day off right, right?) But with some patience and quick and easy maneuvering of the syrup can we were able to open the box of bees and get the queen out of the box. Here’s where the morning ordeal took an interesting turn, and not for the best, I would say.

I opened the queen box, the small little box containing the queen and a couple of her attendants and placed it in the hive. I then grabbed the box of Italian bees and with one big jolt, shook them up and put them in their new home. Bees started flying left, the started swirling right. And as crazy as it seemed, it wasn’t the pandemonium that I expected. They were actually quite calm and gentle. After all the bees were released, we then placed our Ziploc bags of sugar syrup on top and began to wrap things up and move on to our box of Russian bees.

The Russians were a big more trickier and louder as well. Call it an old Soviet grudge, but they actually came out flying and landing on us from the get-go. But with patience and a calm hand, we were able to pull out the queen and start preparing this second hive for its new tenants. But right as we were removing the cork from the thin side of the Russian queen cage, she quickly squeezed her way out and took off like a MiG-29 fighter jet, you know, the ones you can pay and ride over the skies of Moscow. I was dumbfounded! I looked at my friend and said: “There goes your queen, my friend.” His reply: “There she goes . . . flying back to Russia!”

We were both shocked and in awe at what had just transpired: the Russian queen bee had flown away, never to be seen or heard from again. What a tragedy! What a lost to those poor Russian bees! How the hell were were going to fix this undesired and unexpected situation?

I quickly called Geneva Miller and told her that we needed a new queen bee. “Is the Queen dead?” she asked. “No, no . . . she, uh, just, um, flew away?” was my answer/question/response. I didn’t want to lie to the old lady who had helped us out so many times before. Rather, I wanted to be honest and straight with her. So I told her the truth. Luckily, she told me that it happens more often than not and that I should call her this evening to see if they had any spare queens from their shipment.

Call it Karma, call it the Baby Jesus, call it God, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Mother Mary the Virgin, I called her this evening around 7:30 p.m. and she had good news: they had 4 spare Russian queens and one of them had my name on it. “Pffew! What a relief!” were the only words that came out of my mouth as I got ready and drove over to pick up her second royal highness.

Now, you may ask: “Why are you telling this story?” Well, to be 100% completely honest, I thought I would mention this to save someone out there some time, money and much unwanted stress. Just remember: you want to be working with your candy end, which is most likely, the thick end. Remove the cork found on the thick end and poke a hole through the candied sugar and let the bees so the rest of work. If you are a beginner, don’t even mess with any of these fancy techniques like removing the wire and then pinching the queen onto the comb. Just play it safe and let the bees do their thing.

If you want to see how this is best done, save yourself some and check this video out

My Girls Have Arrived!

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was today, all day! It started when I received a telephone call at around 10 this morning from Geneva Miller, who “was just calling to let [me] know that [my] bees had arrived safe and sound and that [I could] come pick them up anytime before 8 this evening.” The entire day, I couldn’t wait to finish work and drive to pick up my girls, all 30,000 of them (30,000 since I was also picking up my friend’s order as well)

For starters, I arrived at the Bee Supply and I was soooo anxious and nervous, because I couldn’t wait to see how my bees looked, what they were doing, how they were going to react and what they were going to sound like. I was utterly shocked! No buzz . . . No high-pitched kazoo-like vibrations, NADA! Just a faint and steady hum of almost deafening proportions was all I heard coming from the two little boxes of wire and wood. “I thought bees were supposed to be loud!?” is what I asked the gentleman, Edward, who was helping me carry them to my car. “Well, it actually goes tuh show ya, that bees ur actually vury calm ‘n passive . . . in my 20 years of raisin’ bees, they’ve always bin quiet ‘n docile.”

The drive home was a slow and steady journey, with every bump and pothole causing me to cautiously and worriedly look over at my bees, which were placed in the leg-area of the front passenger seat. I was thinking the worst case scenario with every major car movement (i.e. that all my bees would fall to the bottom of the box after being suspended to each other and the metal can of sugar syrup and cause all sorts of ruckus and agitated commotion within the box), but they turned out to be just fine riding on home with me.

What can I say? I love these little creatures already! And I seriously can’t wait until tomorrow when I will head on over to my friend’s house in the wee hours of the morning, dawn the suit of a beekeeper and together with my friend, introduce them into their new home, along with their respective queens to reign over them in consecrated unity and sweet prosperity!

“Funny How Honey Ain’t Sweet Like Sugar...”

I called my friend J today to catch up with him and I mentioned that I had just returned from picking up my bees (more on than in a minute) and he actually mentioned that he had just opened MSN.com which had a featured article entitled: “Savoring the Sweet Taste of Honey.” I just had to visit the site so I could see for myself

Clicking on the article actually took me to a series of videos and articles on “The Art of Cooking with Honey”: from Honey Baked Ham and Honey Apple Cake to Honey-Roasted Peanuts and Pancakes with Buttered Honey Syrup. Out of the various videos available for you to see, I thought the video about Tupelo Honey was the most entertaining

I just can’t help noticing that a trail of bees and honey seems to be following me everywhere I go. Even today’s blog title comes from Little Wayne’s part on Drake’s new song “The Motto”

Seriously, is it me, or is everything just reminding me of bees these days? I guess the Honey Nut Cheerios on top of my refrigerator aren’t much help, now are they?

Warning! Guard Bees! No Trespassing!

So I was checking out news videos from around the country and I ran across this video from Houston, Texas where an organic vegetable farmer, Gus Nawara, actually got tired of people breaking into his house and stealing his stuff. And apparently, his dogs weren’t doing as good a job as he wanted them to be doing.

What did he do? He decided to get bees . . . Guard Bees, to be exact.

As funny as that may sound, it’s true. Mr. Nawara actually placed a call to a local “Bee Wrangler,” a Miss Jennifer Scott, who actually goes out and captures one to two wild swarms a day and then either sells them, gives them as gifts and sometimes, keeps them. This time, she decided to hand some over to Mr. Nawara who called her asking specifically for “Mean Bees” so he could protect his home with hundreds of teeny little creatures whose stings are worse than their bites.

And what really makes this a viable security option is the fact that Mr. Nawara actually got stung more than 50 times while moving his own lawn!

So let this be a lesson to all those who are reading this entry: Don’t mess with a man and his bees, because they will sting you. Just make sure you notice any posted signs that may be hanging at the entrance. They will most likely look a little like this:

That is, of course, minus the menacing guard dog